


Media Vita

by inbox



Series: In The End [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Terminal Illnesses, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 04:37:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4593111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inbox/pseuds/inbox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A funeral in the midst of life, or a fitting end for a good run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Media Vita

It was a fine afternoon for a funeral, Boone thought. Warm and sunny, with a hint of the ocean clinging the breeze blowing strong enough to make Cass' hair whip 'round her face. Strong enough to make Boone keep his cap safe under his arm, strong enough to make the thick vines that clung to the cemetery walls shiver and whisper.

Shi Town Gothic, Arcade used to call it. The singing of the vines, the fog rolling across the water, the broken back of the bridge as it subsided into the bay.

There was a loud bark of laughter from the small crowd around Arcade's final home. An old friend told the story of Arcade's first day with the Followers, forcibly volunteered into service by his aunt as a punishment for skipping school in favour of tending a local blackmarket still for the princely sum of a pack of cigarettes and twenty caps a week. It was a story that always brought a big laugh when he was alive, and got a bigger laugh now that he wasn't.

Arcade said that San Fran called to him, though the truth was nowhere near as romantic. A bad chest, one lung gone and the other on the way, made slightly more comfortable by leaving the harsh dry air out east. It gave him a few years longer than expected, long enough to write a few papers and go completely grey, but he made no romance about the longevity of borrowed hours. When the time was right Arcade wrote a few letters and sent a few invitations, and went out of the world at his own direction.

The small cemetery rang with noise as the group recounted his last night, shoveling dirt and giving Arcade one last roast. It was festive, they said. There was music and some truly awful wine, and the doc propped up in his bed telling them that the human body made some disgusting involuntary expulsions after death and they'd better be ready to open some windows. Everyone was holding his hands when he died. His last words were telling someone to stop sitting on his foot.

Fitting, Boone thought, that the sun was shining for Arcade's last party. He offered his elbow to Cass and gave her a small smile.

Someone had bought an armful of mariposa lilies and heaped them onto the fresh dirt, bright purple and white with only a hint of brown creeping through the petals. Someone else had added a stick of bubblegum in Arcade's favourite flavour.

“It's a good day to say goodbye to the ol' smartass,” she said, one hand holding the worst of her hair from her eyes. “He would've loved this.”

“Yeah,” he said, turning his face up to the sun. She squeezed his arm, and grinned when he patted her hand without looking. “Definitely.”


End file.
